Thursday, August 23, 2007

There are many choices to be made this Friday (8/24) at your local popcorn vendor. There is the action flick dropping an FBI agent in between members of the Triad and Yakuza clans in order to root out an assassin. One film follows Mr. Bean along his trip to France and eventually to the Cannes film festival. Another is a crime film starring Spanish from OLD SCHOOL. There is a film that finally allows me to link a picture of ScarJo. Another about a newspaperman looking for his big break in the industry and stumbling upon a downtrodden former boxing champ. A historical piece about a bloody massacre performed by the Mormons that is generating a lot of controversy.

We’ll start with MR. BEAN’S HOLIDAY because it should be quick. If somehow you have managed to miss out on the whole Bean thing (and it has been a while) Rowan Atkinson plays the closest thing you’ll get to a silent film character with an extremely odd disposition. The original Bean film crushed the box office in England, but I’ve never really gotten the whole thing. The film takes place almost entirely on a train in France where Bean separates a famous director from his son and gains an actress for a love interest. Willem Dafoe is the only actor whose name I recognized when looking up info on the movie.

Franc Reyes brings ILLEGAL TENDER to the big screen. The director of EMPIRE teams up with John Singleton for a film about a family that has been on the run from a crime boss for years. Rick Gonzalez (Spanish) plays Wilson De Leon jr. who has finally learned why his father was killed and why the family is constantly moving. De Leon is a college student with a promising future but his fathers past catches up with him and forces him to go after the men that killed his father. This film probably should have been released on HBO or put directly on DVD, there is nothing special about it.

The most beautiful woman on earth finally graces the screen with her presence this year in THE NANNY DIARIES. Scarlett Johannson plays Annie Braddock, a student just out of college who goes to work as a nanny for a rich NYC family after her mother pressures her to find a job in the business world. She would rather become an anthropologist and so chooses to treat the family as a case study. Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti play Mr. And Mrs. X, Alicia Keys plays Annie’s friend and Chris Evans of FANTASTIC FOUR fame plays the love interest. This film sounds like something I thought Johannson was above but she may have just wanted to work with the writers and director of AMERICAN SPLENDOR.

Jason Statham and Jet Li face off in WAR. Statham plays an FBI agent by the name of Jack Crawford who is out to track down the assassin who has killed his partner and that man’s family. Li plays the assassin, Rogue, who resurfaces to start a bloody gang war between the two most infamous Chinese gangs. I don’t expect this film to have a great script in terms of plot or dialogue but if you have ever seen a Statham film (CRANK, anything he did with Guy Richie) or even pretend to comprehend how fantastic a Jet Li fight scene is that its probably worth at least a rent… not to mention that Luis Guzman plays comic relief in the film.

Originally I thought that RESSURECTING THE CHAMP was going to be just another film that missed its target but after reading a few reviews I think that it may be worth seeing. I’m not a big fan of Josh Hartnett and I didn’t like the voice that Samuel L. Jackson chose for his character but Duane Byrge quelled my worries. Hartnett plays a sports writer looking for his big break and Jackson plays a down on his luck former contender who was believed to be dead. The story explores the relationship between sports star and reporter, father and son and what happens when all of the fame is gone. Allen Alda, Peter Coyote and Rachel Nichols costar in the film.

SEPTEMBER DAWN is a fictional retelling of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which has been generating buzz in the form of controversy for some time now. Mormons are angry at the film for the way Brigham Young is depicted, but there are others who are angered by the film as well. The tragedy took place in Utah in 1857 and left 140 settlers dead at the hands of the Mormon people. Placed into the middle of this is a love story about a Mormon and a woman from Arkansas on her way to California. John Voight and Dean Cain are cast in the film, but I don’t believe that they are the leads; also YOUNG GUNS director Christopher Cain directed this western project.

There is also a Mockumentary about closing on a house titled CLOSING ESCROW, which stars some of the Reno 911 cast and I wont be writing about but looks better than most of the crap for the week. Another film that only gets two sentences sentence is RIGHT AT YOUR DOOR, which is about the detonation of dirty bombs in Los Angeles. It may not be a good film but it stars Rory Cochrane who played Slater in DAZED AND CONFUSED, Lucus in EMPIRE RECORDS and Freck in A SCANNER DARKLY… awesome.